Tiny Sacrifices
by tiylaya
Summary: The conflicting demands of GForce and his dreams of a private life pull Tiny in different directions.
1. Chapter 1

**Tiny Sacrifices**

A Battle of the Planets story

This story is based on characters and situations based on the 1970s anime series 'Battle of the Planets' (produced by Sandy Frank Entertainment) which was in turn derived from the series 'Science Ninja Team Gatchaman' (created by Tatsunoko Productions). Characters are used without permission, and not for profit.

There's very little violence in this one, although there are a couple of dangerous situations.

Comments or suggestions would be very welcome.

* * *

**Chapter One**

Her eyes were the clearest blue Tiny had ever seen. At times they reflected the vibrant blue of the sky, at others the cool depths of the ocean around Center Neptune. And sometimes, like just now, they were closed as she raised her face to kiss him.

This time it was the real thing. This time he was in love.

As he had been with Alice, and Elsa, and Jenny, and Tanya, and Jane, and ... he heard the list go on, his inner voice adopting Jason's occasionally sarcastic tones. He shook his head slightly as he broke the kiss. He and Katie were an item, real cool with each other.

"What's wrong, Tiny?" she asked, tilting her head so her blonde hair hung past the right side of her face. His abstraction hadn't gone unnoticed.

"Just can't believe I get to be the luckiest man in the world."

She laughed, swatting him playfully on the shoulder and looking about her with interest. Highlights in her hair caught and reflected the streetlights. Tiny sighed, glancing up at the large ornamental 'J' which indicated that they had reached their destination. Princess's bar was always his final stop for the night, and the place where he had to say farewell to his dates. Even if he had dared let any of the graceful women see the casual untidiness of his home, Anderson had made it clear to them all that even their civilian accommodations should always remain secret.

"I've got to go," he said awkwardly. "Are you sure you don't want me to walk you home?"

She gave him an arch look. "And show you where I live on our first date?" She leaned forward and stood on her toes to plant another light kiss on his cheek. "I think not."

The door opened behind Tiny, filling the alley way with a brief burst of light and music. Katie pulled away from him, aware of the presence of others. Tiny ignored them.

"But I worry!" he protested. "If anything happened to you my world would end."

"You do say the sweetest things," she smiled. "Don't worry, I don't live far from here. Call me!" she added as she started to walk away.

* * *

Mark couldn't quite suppress a smile as Tiny's latest conquest reached the end of the alley and turned back onto the main road.

"'My world would end'?" he quoted, shaking his head. "I don't know how you do it, Tiny."

"Sweet?" Jason added lightly from his side. "Sickening is more like it."

Tiny turned at the sound of their voices, momentarily guilty to have been caught out, but then he leaned back against the 'J', smugly folding his hands behind his head. "It's just my natural charm, I guess."

Truthfully, he perpetually wondered why neither Mark nor Jason seemed aware of the hordes of young women admiring their good looks and naturally graceful bodies. His two friends could have any woman they chose. But they chose to remain dedicated to their job. He'd talked it over with Jason once, when the taciturn young man was in an unusually expansive mood. Jason felt that they had their whole lives in front of them - that there would be time for distractions when Spectra was defeated and they were no longer risking their lives on a daily basis. Perhaps Mark felt the same way, or perhaps the Commander was truly as oblivious to his own charms as he appeared to be.

Tiny shuddered, finding it all too easy to imagine a world in which every spark of pleasure in life was delayed until some distant and mythical day when there would be 'time for it'. What was the point of fighting this war if they allowed Spectra to take away everything that they were fighting for?

At the same time though, Tiny knew that Jason had a point. He had lost count of the number of girlfriends who had grown tired of his evasiveness, or sudden departures from prearranged dates. How long would it be before Katie did the same? He felt a pang of despair as he thought of trying to live without her, and then a pang of regret. He was distancing himself from her already in anticipation of that rejection, he realised. Was that the act of someone in love?

"Hey, big guy." Jason's voice was softer now, its sardonic edge gone. "I didn't mean to get you down."

Tiny shook himself and tried for a smile. His friends knew him too well. "What brings you out here?" he asked, changing the subject.

Mark gave him a considering look and then laughed, accepting Tiny's decision not to share what was troubling him. "Princess is looking for ways to attract more customers. She's got Keyop in there singing karaoke!"

Tiny gave that due thought. "Bad?" he asked.

Jason nodded, straight-faced. "Worse than you can possibly imagine."

* * *

"Tiny, you're living in a dream world!" Princess laughed as she wiped the bar around him. Tiny started, his elbows sliding off the smooth bar top, his chin dropping from where it was supported on his hands. For a long, unsteady, moment he seriously considered falling forwards over the bar or backwards off his stool, before he regained his balance.

Keyop laughed at his clowning. The younger boy warbled a sentence in the peculiar language only his mind seemed wired to understand. "Pretty girl!" he finished.

"Ah, I see," Princess nodded. "Is this still Katie, or have you found a new love of your life?"

Tiny was shocked. "Katie is the only girl I'll ever adore," he declared impulsively.

Mark looked up from where he was sprawled across a table seat. As they often did, the impulses of a friend and a commander warred behind his blue eyes. It was a joy for all Tiny's friends to see him so happy, but at the same time it was undeniable that his tendency to daydream - already pronounced - had become more noticeable than ever. It wasn't affecting his work ... yet, but Mark had a responsibility to see that it never got to that stage. He kept his tone light as he probed the situation.

"The pretty blonde? This must have been what - your fifth date?"

"That just has to be a record," Jason noted from his seat beside Tiny at the bar. His quick glance at Mark confirmed that G-Force's second-in-command hadn't missed the concern in Mark's expression.

Tiny nodded, oblivious. "And I've only had to run out on two of them," he said happily. "That's a record too. She thinks I'm a reserve airline pilot and have to cover if anyone gets ill."

Even Jason smiled at Tiny's obvious pleasure. "We ought to watch out, team. They'll be buying matching sweaters and picking out furniture soon."

Tiny hesitated, glancing at Jason as if puzzled. Even he couldn't miss the implications of a comment like that. And if Jason thought he was getting too serious, what about...?

Princess frowned. "Doesn't it worry you that you can't tell her? I think I would be angry if I found out my boyfriend was lying to me." She caught a quick look from Mark, and blushed without really knowing why. "If I had one," she qualified.

Tiny's open face crumpled into a look of frustrated dismay.

"Yeah," he said softly. "I mean, she's funny, and she's smart - she's taking classes at the university. She could deal - I'm sure. I mean, I know she can't find out, but I feel like a real heel about it."

"Tiny, the security of the team has to come first," Mark told him gravely, dropping his casual facade in favour of the direct statement. Tiny sat upright in his stool, glaring at his commander.

"You think I don't know that, Mark?" He stood abruptly, turning his shoulder to dodge the hand Princess stretched out to comfort him. He avoided his friends' eyes, simmering with anger. "Look, if it comes to that, I'll let her down easy - okay? But why is it so wrong for one of us to have a little fun?" His head came up on the final words, his earnest expression making them more of a genuine question than a protest.

It was one that Mark couldn't answer. He looked around his team, seeing them as only he knew them - young, vibrant, full of the joy of living. True, Spectra had tried to seduce G-Force members before, but was that enough reason to cut off all human relationships? Of course not.

"We're not saying you shouldn't have fun," Princess tried to intervene. "Just ... just be careful, that's all."

Tiny stood and strode away from the bar. "I need some fresh air," he said harshly.

The door slammed shut behind him, leaving his friends to exchange looks of startled dismay.

* * *

Tiny wondered aimlessly. His dockside shack seemed as good a final destination as any, but he was in small hurry to get there. Why bother when the disorder and isolation of his bachelor pad would simply remind him that she wasn't there?

Around him, to every side, tall buildings climbed towards the sky, all but obscuring it from the view of those on the ground. Glancing upwards, he tried to imagine what it would be like to not be in G-Force. How would it feel to lose the freedom of the skies, to never again see open space in every direction? How would he cope if confined to the earth, restricted to a two dimensional world like 99 of the world's population ... like Katie?

Even as he struggled to comprehend the concept, he knew the effort was futile. G-Force was as integral to Tiny's life as he was integral to the team. Even if Anderson would let him go, he would never leave. Not even for the woman who was becoming central to his entire existence.

But was the only alternative to sacrifice her entirely? Princess had been right - this couldn't go on much longer. It would not just be unfair, it would be immoral to let Katie care for him without warning her of the peril.

A world without Katie.

A world without G-Force.

Tears pricked at his eyes as the two halves of his life pressed at him like the jaws of a vice.

He wasn't aware that he had wondered into a bad part of the docks until he caught movement in the corner of his tear-blurred vision. By then, of course, it was too late. Whether the gang of rough-looking men were some latter-day shanghai brigade, or simply drunk sailors looking for action after too long at sea, they said little as they closed in around him.

Tiny dashed at his eyes with the back of his hand, his anger with life in general simply growing as one of his harassers laughed. Tiny turned towards the man, his round eyes narrowing as he assessed the muscular physique, and the hefty plank of wood that the man lofted casually.

Oh, he must look such a tempting target - overweight, casually dressed and wondering alone in these dark alley ways. These men wouldn't recognise fighting poise if it was coming towards them - and it was.

Tiny didn't wait for the taunts, didn't bother to ask what they wanted or whether they would step aside. The plank-wielding sailor was unconscious on the ground before his companions were even aware that their victim had moved. Tiny felt the stinging in his knuckles, but that uppercut had been satisfyingly worth it.

He grinned. This wasn't a battle for their planet. This wasn't even the emotional battle he faced with Katie. No, just for once, this was simple. These guys might be strong, but he was no weakling. He wouldn't even have to employ the boost of his cerebronic powers to deal with this little lot. Nothing for Mark to get antsy about.

After all, plain fisticuffs would be much more fun.

"A workout. Guess that might just be what I need," he said - mostly to himself. "Well, come on then!"

The dozen or so other men hesitated, startled by his feral grin, and wary now. But just as Tiny was empowered by the anxieties of the day, these men had seen their friend felled ignominiously, and their anger overrode any caution. They pressed forward as one body.

Tiny roared as he vanished from sight in the middle of a tumbling, confusing melee. These weren't fighters. They weren't even the semi-trained peons of Spectra. Even as he felt a nose crunch under his fist, he shook his head. They were scarcely even a challenge.

Even so, he felt better by the time the alley way fell silent. Perspiration cooled across his shoulder blades, and he flexed his shoulders to ease stress out of the muscles. Relaxed, he looked down with satisfaction at the circle of groaning, hardly-moving men around his feet.

He folded his arms smugly across his chest. "Huh, looks like you got what was coming to you."

"Duck!"

He obeyed the command instinctively, and was startled to feel a small form move rapidly past him - Keyop launching a flying kick at a figure just behind his head.

Tiny turned quickly to find his young friend leaning casually against a wall, plank-man once more immobile at his feet. Tiny shook his head with grudgingly amused respect.

"That guy must have a jaw of iron," he noted. "What're you doing here, Keyop?"

Keyop didn't lose his artificial nonchalance. He warbled a few notes. "I was just passing." He burbled a little more as he surveyed the human devastation around them. "Thought I'd join in the fun!"

Tiny gave him a sidelong glance. "'Just passing'? Yeah, sure. And Princess let you out for a wander around the docks at this time of night?"

Keyop gave a few worried chirps. His grasp of language always deteriorated when he was anxious or guilty. Tiny stepped towards the boy, and threw a casual arm across his shoulders.

"You wanted to talk about Katie," he guessed calmly as they started to walk away from the groaning ruins of the ambush. Keyop blushed, but there was nothing childlike in his eyes when he looked up.

"Know how you feel," he said quietly.

Tiny sighed, knowing that Keyop was right. He wasn't the first one being called on to make this sacrifice. But the fight had drained him of his anger, and opened his eyes just that little bit wider. He glanced back over his shoulder, and Keyop turned to follow his look.

"That was easy," Tiny told him. "But I guess that the next one won't be, or the one after that. Or the one after that. And this time it was just me - what if Katie were here, or what if they'd been Spectra goons in disguise and not just bored Joes?"

Keyop nodded, his expression earnest. None of this argument was new, of course, but sometimes a man just needed to face up to the reality of it for himself. "I'm sorry, Tiny."

Tiny sighed again. Tears were gathering unbidden in his eyes once more, but they were tears of resignation.

"I'll let her down easy."


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

Easier said than done, he thought to himself for the thousandth time that evening. He stared into her deep blue eyes, and his will simply faded to nothing. Even when his resolution returned in brief bursts, the thought of hurting her was almost physically painful.

It had been a wretched two days. Tiny's team-mates had been the model of compassionate support since he made his decision, but then first one date and then a second had fallen victim to Zoltar's whims. The delay tore at Tiny. Until he told her, he couldn't think of it as being over. But how could he send her a 'Dear John,' or even tell her by 'phone? No, he owed it to her to tell her in person, even if he couldn't ever explain to her why it was necessary.

So he just got more and more nervous, more and more tense, until even a word from one of his team-mates made him jump and jerk the Phoenix into a sudden climb. Mark had been sympathetic as a friend, but in the field - with all their lives in the balance - the commander had snapped out a stinging rebuke. Tiny had just nodded and mumbled an apology, knowing that Mark would have been well within his rights to pull him up a lot sooner.

Only one small thought consoled him. Perhaps if this went on long enough, Katie would dump him first. That would hurt, but it was a pain he was accustomed to. Even now, he wasn't sure he could inflict such agony on her instead.

Finally though, Spectra granted them a lull. He called Katie with trepidation, asking her to join him for their twice-postponed date. For a moment the irritation in her voice gave him a kind of ambivalent hope, but there was no hesitation in her agreement, no sign that his unreliability was a terminal flaw in their relationship. Numbly, he gave her a time and place - a restaurant, not Princess's bar. No, he couldn't face associating the team's haven with this.

She had kissed him almost before he registered her presence, taking his breath away in more ways than one. He was lost for words as she virtually pulled him into the restaurant. He sat in silence as she asked what he had been doing, then interrupted herself in irritation, knowing from experience that he would have no coherent excuse.

And he gazed, enchanted, at the mischievous smile on her face. It wasn't until she reached into her purse and pulled out a wrapped gift that he found his voice.

"Katie, I can't!" he protested desperately.

She laughed. "Open it," she urged. "I have one too," she added with a smile.

One what? Tiny felt his heart sinking, wondering if Jason had been right all along. Even someone who routinely wore a numbered T-Shirt would draw the lines at matching clothes with their girlfriend. Still, the package seemed too compact to contain a sweater, or anything much larger than a jewellery box. If anything that thought was more alarming.

He tore the tissue paper away with a quick, nervous action, and stared in bemusement at the small device lying within. Oh, he recognised it, of course. A few years ago these things had been all the rage. A "lover's link" it was called - one of a pair of small beacons designed to allow a couple to feel in touch even when they were apart. A few commands in a computer, a code from one beacon, and the partner beacon's location would be displayed on screen. In practise the position returned was vague - narrowing the area down to no less than a square mile or so - and the devices soon fell out of vogue.

Tiny looked up to see a smiling Katie holding the second link, and despair at the concept warred with a certain admiration that she'd managed to track a working pair down. Her smile faded at the dismay on his face. She reached across the table to run a caressing finger down his cheek.

"Tiny? What's wrong? Aren't you pleased? This way even when you have to be far away, you can see I'm thinking of you."

He swallowed hard, imagining how Mark or the chief would react to the idea of him carrying a homing device. "Katie, I can't take this."

Her confused expression turned cold.

"What?" she demanded.

"Katie ... my work ... I just can't." Tiny stammered the words, seeing the dismay on her face. Now, he knew. He had to tell her now or he'd never have the strength again. "Look, er Katie. I can't see you any more!"

He almost shouted the words, his voice become high pitched and abrupt as he squeezed the phrase out.

The blood drained from her face, and she actually swayed in her seat. He'd rarely seen anyone look so shocked.

"Katie ..."

Of all the times for his wrist activator to come alive, this was the worst. It pulsed against his wrist and he knew from the pattern of the vibration that it was an emergency that couldn't wait. No matter how much it hurt, he had to leave - now.

He turned away from her horrified, accusing blue eyes, and pushed his chair back from the table.

"I've got to go."

Her hand grabbed his wrist, and there was a burning anger now beneath her shock.

"What? You think you can dump me and leave without a word of explanation? Think again, Tiny. I know what we have here - I know it's real! What's wrong? Are you in some kind of trouble? Let me help!"

She caught him with her eyes, and he saw the incisive, intelligent woman he loved.

"You still love me, Tiny. I can see it in your eyes."

His wrist activator pulsed again, its rhythm more urgent still. He had to get to the Phoenix, or let the entire team down.

"Tomorrow," he said impulsively. "8 o'clock. I'll ... I'll try to explain."

He pulled himself free of her as gently as he could, and ran for the door. He didn't notice until it was too late to turn back that the lover's link was still tightly gripped in his hand.

* * *

It was a scramble to get to the Phoenix and get her into the air - it always was when he was in the city. Or anywhere, in fact, but sitting waiting in the ready room. Sometimes he dreamed of the science fiction stories of teleportation. Wouldn't it be a gift to simply snap his fingers and appear at his console with the mighty Phoenix roaring around him? But as incredible as the team's cerebronic superpowers were, it looked like instantaneous transportation was just a little beyond what Center Neptune's science could deliver.

Instead he was red-faced and harried by the time he caught up with the rest of the team. He'd had little time to stop and think about that last painful conversation, no time really to do anything except make sure the link was safely deactivated and shove it in a pocket.

Princess looked windblown from her long bike ride when she slid down into the control room. She eased into her seat with barely a glance at Tiny, beginning the process of checking her scanners while he lined the Phoenix up on Keyop's bubble.

"Mark sounds like he's in a hurry," she noted as her fingers flew across the keyboard.

Tiny winced, remembering the commander's somewhat terse response to his launch report. "Yeah, well. I'm here now, aren't I?" He nodded in satisfaction as the G-4 space bubble lifted free of the ground, and turned to line up on Jason's G-2 even before the starboard nacelle began to close. "He should try doing this without me sometime. I'd like to see him trying to fly this baby flat out."

Even to himself the words sounded angry and unhappy. He was aware of a pause in the rhythm of Princess's typing, and of Keyop hesitating in the doorway. Wordlessly, G-Force's youngest member came to sit beside Tiny at the co-pilot's position, redirecting his checks to the forward consoles with a few commands to the computer. Tiny kept his eyes forward, watching the screens carefully as Mark lined up his jet on the Phoenix's rear bay. Once, when they were all still new at this, he might have raised his seat to the bubble to improve his view for this procedure. The visibility from the cabin was lousy at the best of times, and it had taken time for them to learn how to judge distances and speed from the two dimensional viewscreens alone.

They were long past such need now. Mark docked with all the grace and precision Tiny expected of their Commander. Tiny nodded in satisfaction, flicking the switch which sealed her compartments and reset the ship to her in-flight mode. The Phoenix was up to full speed, and following the course Mark had set, before Jason and Mark made it to the cabin from forward and aft respectively. Tiny squinted at the coordinates displayed on his screens, adjusting the ship's height and altitude to optimise her speed to destination.

There was a heavy silence behind him in the cabin and he knew without turning to check that the rest of the team were using hand signals, Princess warning her commander that Tiny was in something far from his usual cheerful mood. Tiny kept his eyes resolutely forward. He didn't need to know, didn't want to know, what his friends were saying about him.

It seemed an age before Mark displaced Keyop and slipped into the co-pilot's chair.

"Tiny - "

"ETA at target forty minutes," Tiny snapped before Mark could continue. He so did not want to discuss this at the moment.

He felt Mark studying him, assessing his behaviour. The commander gave a sharp nod, accepting that Tiny wouldn't let his emotions interfere with his work. There was a general relaxation in the Phoenix's cabin, Keyop letting out a small sigh. Despite that, Tiny knew that his team would be looking out for him on this mission, making sure it didn't all get to be too much. After all, they'd done it for one another before.

His launch checks completed, Jason stretched and leaned back in his chair. The motion was reflected in Tiny's monitors, and drew the eyes of all four of them to him. Tiny couldn't resist a small smile, grateful for the distraction. Jason didn't so much as glance in his direction.

"So what's the jazz, Mark?"

Mark chuckled briefly. Somehow Jason made it sound like they were out for a stroll in the park. The young commander didn't lose his edge of tense anticipation, but he did lean back in his own chair.

"Actually, I'm not sure. I got a red alert scramble from Zark, and the coordinates were in my 'plane before I was! The coding was all marked double urgent." He glanced up at the cabin's upper bank of monitor screens - currently blank. "I guess the chief will - "

On cue, the upper right-hand screen brightened. Security Chief Anderson's shaggy hair and thick moustache concealed most of his emotion; his mask of calm efficiency hid virtually all that remained. Like Jason, Anderson had the gift of making the extraordinary seem mundane.

"Good evening, team." Anderson nodded in his normal polite greeting. They knew him well enough to recognise that the courtesy masked his anxiety. He never enjoyed sending his protégés into the field, least of all at short notice or with little information. "I am sorry to have to interrupt your plans for tonight." He paused briefly, although whether he was expecting them to protest or accept his apology wasn't clear. In either case, he continued before they could reply. "As you will have noted, your destination is in south-east Asia. To be precise, it lies amid the Khmer temples of Laos. In recent weeks, a mysterious monster has been terrorising the villages of the region. The first incident was attributed purely to local superstition - the monster takes the form of a local serpent deity, or perhaps wyrm would be a better term."

"We're fighting a worm?" Keyop burst out, wide-eyed with astonishment.

Princess clapped the boy lightly on his shoulder. "He said 'wyrm' - sort of like a dragon."

"But longer and more wriggly," Tiny added, mostly for the amusement value in Keyop's expression.

The Chief gave them all a quelling look, stilling Keyop's dismayed burble.

"However a pattern has now emerged. This creature targets the infrastructure of the villages it attacks, causing more material damage than would seem reasonable given chance, or attack by a wild animal, alone."

"And it's targeting the Laotian agricultural developments?" Mark guessed, making it more a statement than a question.

Anderson's lips quirked into a slight smile. "Good, Mark. Yes, the attacks do indeed appear to focus on villages servicing the International Science Organisation's rice cultivation and agricultural research centre, and on outlying portions of the centre itself. As you aware, more than a third of the world's population is dependent on rice as a staple food. Improving the yield and cultivation methods for the crop is a vital component of the ISO's efforts to deal with the region's overpopulation."

"A prime target for Spectra," Jason grated. His face was shadowed by his visor, giving him an ominous look as his hands tightened into fists.

Tiny was frowning now too. "Okay, so I guess this is important, but what's so urgent that we had to be dragged ...?" His voice died away as he recognised his own uncharacteristic outburst, but Mark was nodding thoughtfully.

"That's a good point, chief. If these attacks have been going on for a while, why send us out -now- with no notice?"

The chief nodded too. "The attacks have been steadily escalating in severity. We cannot afford to allow them to continue, but responding to them sufficiently rapidly has been problematic. The timing of attacks is erratic. However one consistent element of the incidents is their duration. Each of the attacks has lasted between 62 and 65 minutes from first sighting to withdrawal of the 'wyrm'."

Mark glanced quickly at the ship's chronometer, calculating the time it had taken them to get to their vehicles and rendezvous, and then adding in their time to destination. All five of them were running through the same analysis. Assuming Zark had been primed to summon them immediately ...

"We'll only have seven minutes to find it when we get there," Mark concluded. His white-winged cloak flared behind him as he shifted restlessly in his chair.

"But when we do find it, we'll make sure it doesn't get away," Jason added in a satisfied tone.

"Yeah!" Keyop exclaimed.

"No!" Anderson responded with equal vigour. "The rapid withdrawals indicate that the wyrm construct must have a limited power supply - "

" - And return to its base to recharge." Now Mark's fists were the ones that clenched. "You don't want the wyrm. You want its base."

* * *

"So," Jason asked as their destination approached. "Do we have a plan?"

Mark looked up slowly. He had spent the last twenty minutes in silence, his head bowed over his monitors. If there was a clue about this monster's origins in the information Anderson had forwarded, he had failed to see it. And, judging by the silence from his team-mates, so had everyone else. It looked like they'd have to do this the hard way.

"We find it, we follow it," he said simply.

Princess giggled at his matter-of-fact tone, but her face was suitably sombre by the time the rest of the team turned to her. "Switching to infrared sensors," she reported. "If this thing is using up energy at such a rate, it has to be hot."

Tiny nodded, turning without enthusiasm back to his own instruments. He glanced up as the infrared display came up on the main screens. "Setting up a standard search sweep."

"No." Mark's hand came down on top of Tiny's, stopping him from moving the controls. He peered through the red-tinted viewscreen. Below them the thick forests of Laos concealed the ground from view. Rising from them like some bizarre crop of toadstools, the roofs of high-domed Khmer temples provided the only visible evidence for human occupation. Mark selected a large one, indicating the clearing that surrounded it. "Down there, Tiny."

"You want us to land?" Tiny asked, startled out of his brooding. His eyes flew in confusion to the chronometer. They had five minutes at best.

"No, just hover between the trees - out of sight." Mark turned back towards Princess, his motions rapid and decisive. "Get the local authorities on the radio. Just for a change, let's ask someone who knows what's going on around here. We -want- this thing to head back to its base, not fight us 'till it runs out of juice. The last thing we want to do is let it know we're here."

* * *

The tension in the Phoenix's cabin was palpable. The only sound was that of Jason dismantling and cleaning his multipurpose gun - that and the relay from the local police radio frequencies. With the help of the locals on the ground it had taken barely a minute for the Phoenix's sensors to locate the alien wyrm monster, and chart its course.

Even with 7-Zark-7's assurance that the region had been evacuated of civilians, it was hard to watch as the wyrm thrashed its way through fields and buildings alike. Its sinuous body seemed almost to undulate as it walked, its centre of mass kept low on short stubby legs.

"It feels wrong just to sit back and wait," Jason burst out, snapping the last element of his weapon back into place. He holstered the gun with a smooth action, twirling it around his fingers before sliding it back into its tight pouch.

Tiny chuckled at his impatience. "Now you know how I feel."

The commander had been gripping the arms of his chair tightly, clearly as impatient as Jason. Nonetheless, Mark smiled at them both, before a gasp from Princess turned all their attention back to the screen.

"It's moving off!"

Tiny's hands moved towards the Phoenix's controls, only for Mark to stop him once again.

"Wait! Princess, Jason, track it! Make sure it's staying on one course. It's not faced any significant opposition. There's no reason for it not to head straight back to base - unless we show our hand too early."

"Sneaky," Keyop approved with a grin.

"Yeah," Tiny muttered gloomily. "I guess I'd just have gone blundering in."

Mark patted him on the shoulder. "There's nothing wrong with being a straightforward kind of guy, Tiny. It's just that today calls for something a little different that's all."

Tiny forced a grin. With a show of nonchalance, he leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head like a pillow. "Just shout when you want me."

* * *

Mark seemed uncertain how to react to that, saying nothing until he gave the order to move. Tiny kicked himself as he lifted the Phoenix and followed, keeping in the narrow margin of safety just outside the standard Spectran sensor range, just within his own. He was trying too hard, he knew. Usually he knew just when to lighten the mood with a little humour, and when sombre determination was called for. Today, his judgement had gone to pot. Thoughts of Katie intruded constantly, the hurt in her eyes when he told her it was over, her certainty that he still loved her. Oh, it wouldn't affect his determination to fight Spectra - if anything his resentment of the relentless invasion force was growing by the moment. But it was small wonder that his mood was swinging violently; small wonder that Mark was about to leave him behind again.

Tiny knew it as soon as the wyrm undulated its way through the forest and into a mountain lake. Keyop gave one look at the clear blue snowmelt and shuddered. The contrast between the tropical climate of the forest and the cold water promised to make the mere idea of a dip in the lake unpleasant.

"It's not stopping," Mark noted, standing and leaning forwards as if that could improve the view projected by the overstretched sensors. Even through the snow of interference that the sensors picked up at this distance, it was clear that the ripples the submerged wyrm generated were heading arrow straight towards a lake-front temple.

The building was huge, its tallest halls capped by domed roofs that seemed curiously bulbous and misshapen to occidental eyes. The Khmer temple architecture was unmistakeable, and oddly fitting for the ornate serpent deity Spectra had chosen as the subject of this masquerade.

"No place to land the Phoenix there," Tiny noted gloomily. "There's not a clearing large enough for five miles in any direction."

The sun was climbing towards noon. Its heat pounded the forests, and the metallic skin of the Phoenix, rippling the air into a vague haze. Tiny sighed, perhaps it was the middle of the day here but his body still felt that it was late evening. They were all accustomed to dealing with jet-lag, but today, with his thoughts flying to Katie with each available minute, he felt as if he hadn't slept for weeks. The outlines of the domes seemed to waver in front of his eyes and he shook his head. Slowing the Phoenix, he brought her to a hover, barely above the tree line, and just outside the standard Spectran sensor radius.

"Let's bomb this thing and get out of here," he suggested abruptly.

"Hey!" Jason protested with a startled look at Tiny, "That's my line!"

"Not without knowing what's in there." Mark's eyes scanned the ornate building, his analytic mind working at top speed. "Besides, for all we know that's a genuine sacred temple. We can't destroy it unless there's no other choice."

Tiny and Jason both nodded reluctantly, acknowledging Mark's point. In the practicalities of their life and death struggle, it was too easy to overlook the importance that many placed on their faith. But Spectra was using the beliefs of these people against them, G-Force had to be better than that. G-Force had to understand that their battle was as much to protect the right to freedom of belief as it was to protect lives.

"We go in underwater?" Princess suggested.

Mark should his head sharply.

"They'll be watching the lake carefully, and it's too small to hide the Phoenix's, or even Keyop's bubble's, approach." He frowned, clearly reaching a decision. "I think this is one of those times when a direct approach is called for. We're not going to be able to sneak around in broad daylight."

"So we'll be tourists, and walk in from here?" Jason guessed.

"You got it in one, Jase," Mask nodded. He turned to the front console, his cloak flaring around him in a smooth arc. "Tiny - "

"Yeah, I know. Stay with the ship," Tiny muttered unhappily.

The commander nodded, trying to make a joke of a decision he would have made even if there had been another option. "It does look like you get to put your feet up again, Tiny. If we have to leave the ship this far away, I want someone with her in case we need a lift out of there in a hurry."

Keyop had pulled out his bola and was idly swinging it so the two weights - hopefully not armed - were clacking together rhythmically. He burbled sympathetically, his head tilted to one side. "Bring you a souvenir!" he joked.

"Not today you won't." Mark's comment stopped Keyop's fidgeting. The boy turned to stare at his older friend. The flick of Mark's eyes to Tiny would have been imperceptible to anyone outside G-Force. Tiny pretended he hadn't seen it. "That base has approaches by air, land and water. Your vehicle is our most versatile. I think it would be a good idea for you to stay with your bubble car. Keep an eye open for anyone trying to escape. But come running when I shout!"

Keyop's glance at Tiny was rather less subtle than the commander's. Finally, G-Force's youngest team member threw himself down in his chair, swinging it back on its mount. He tossed his bola into the air and caught it. "Fine," he snapped after several seconds of irritated warbling. "But call nicely," he added in a display of pique. "Might decide I'm too busy."

No one took his threat seriously. Jason smiled a tight little smile, mussing up Keyop's brown hair. Then Princess, Jason and Mark were standing on the Phoenix's platform and it was rising, taking them to the ship's top bubble. There were no goodbyes, there never were between this team. No one wanted to be reminded that each parting could become final.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The waiting was hard, but then wasn't it always? Tiny checked through the Phoenix's sensor logs. He ran all the in-flight diagnostics. He checked the presets - one to take the Phoenix into a steep dive, the second into a roaring climb; too often in the past there had been time to hit only a single button. And then, finally, he sat back in his chair and tried to ignore the impatient clacking of Keyop's bolas. The boy wasn't accustomed to this torment. He could barely last five minutes at a time before jumping up and prowling the cabin as if he expected to find some dangerous intruder.

Tiny let him. He didn't want to start a conversation. He didn't need Keyop to tell him what he already knew. Even as he ran through his usual tasks to distract himself from the frantic anxiety for their friends, there was an added distraction in his mind. Katie's blue eyes stared accusingly from his own reflection in the Phoenix's monitors. He heard her confusion and anger. He hated himself for leaving the job half done. It was all too easy to imagine her hurting as the hours passed. Leaving her without any explanation had been unfair. But what choice had he had? Why couldn't Spectra have waited another ten minutes? That was all it would have taken.

Katie's lover's link was in his hands now. He turned it over and over, gazing at it as if could provide an answer. On its side, even with its active transmitter circuits disabled, a soft pink light glowed. Katie had activated her link. She was telling him she loved him still. The blue light beside it remained dark, his own device failing to broadcast the reply. He longed to turn it on, to let her know he was thinking of her too, but perhaps it would be better this way. She had to know he was serious.

Ironic that the communicator he wished to hear - letting him know that his friends were safe - remained silent, while this constant reminder of his pain was persistently alive.

Tiny had almost forgotten about Keyop's presence until the boy gasped. Tiny looked up guiltily into Keyop's horrified eyes.

"A homing signal?" Keyop gasped, the words almost lost in a series of distressed warbles.

"It's not on!" Tiny snapped defensively. His hands curled around the device, cradling it gently as he shoved it into his pocket. He looked up, meeting the boy's wary expression with an angry frown. Did Keyop really think he was that stupid? "You know I wouldn't risk us all!"

Keyop visibly calmed, his half-extended wings settling around him. Tiny relaxed too, the tension draining from between them. Keyop trusted him after all, but there was sadness in his eyes now as he settled into the co-pilot's chair. "You couldn't leave her?" he guessed, the words coming out clearly for a change.

Tiny gave a helpless little laugh, trying to make light of it, but his young friend wasn't going to be so easily fooled. Tiny's facade crumbled, and he allowed the serious man inside to peer through. "She wouldn't let me go. She wants to know why." He paused, shaking his head. "I promised I'd tell her ... something ... tonight."

Instinctively, he glanced at the ship's chronometer. It was deep night now, back home - well past noon here in South-East Asia. Keyop followed his look, and again tossed his bolas nervously into the air. Whether the boy consciously intended to change the subject or not, he succeeded.

"It's been hours," he fretted.

The observation was enough. Enough dwelling on the insoluble. Tiny's attention snapped back to the other issue he'd been trying to avoid. He'd expected a call from Mark long ago - one way or another.

"Two hours, six minutes," Tiny told his young friend, the same anxiety on his own face. For Keyop's sake, he forced it behind his usual carefree mask. He reached out to pat the boy on the top of his brightly coloured helmet. "That's nothing, Keyop. You guys leave me sitting here for longer than this all the time."

Keyop warbled impatiently, drawing strength from Tiny's reassurance. "Huh, they're just having all the fun ..."

His voice cut off. In the sudden silence, the chiming of two wrist activators was very loud. Tiny reacted instantly, one hand reaching out to start an engine warm-up cycle, even as the other was raised towards his lips.

"Ears on!"

"Tiny!" Mark's voice was a low-voiced hiss. "Get out of there!" Even as he spoke, they heard startled shouts in the background, the sudden buzz of Princess's yo-yo weapon and the report of Jason's gun. Mark's next words were at full volume, shouted. "They know where you are!"

* * *

It was all the warning they had.

It took no more than a second for Tiny's hands to fall to their accustomed place on the controls. Rise, he coaxed his ship. The time for concealment was gone. All that mattered was getting off the ground as quickly as possible.

The Phoenix responded instantly to his instructions, her engines loud in the sudden silence. But something was wrong. He knew that a second before the engines cut out with a bone-shaking cough. Keyop gasped, his eyes wide as the ship rocked back onto her landing struts. He leaned forward, scanning the ship's status readouts.

"We're overheating! How ...?"

Tiny nodded grimly, trying to assess for himself whether any actual damage had been done to the engines or whether the safety cut-outs had worked in time. "The engine air intakes are blocked," he explained curtly.

Giving up on the engines, he brought the external monitors up on the main screens. The tree line was no more than a few meters from the Phoenix's perimeter and the ship's stubby wings blocked the cameras from having a clear view of the dense forest. Even so, now that he was looking for them, the dark green outlines of camouflaged Spectrans were clearly visible lurking in the trees. Perhaps they had backtracked along the path the others had taken. Perhaps they had seen the Phoenix's arrival despite his best efforts. It hardly mattered now. Tiny's fists clenched around the Phoenix's non-responsive controls. He had let Spectrans sneak-up on him and compromise his ship before even noticing. What kind of G-Force member was he?

Keyop gave an uncertain warble. "Stupid place to stand," he noted, gesturing towards the Spectrans on screen, but the tension in Tiny's posture undermined his confidence.

Tiny raised a green-gloved hand to rub his suddenly aching head. "Huh, if we could turn our full exhausts on them or manoeuvre the ship, sure. But that's not going to happen if the engines won't even cycle!" Tiny struggled not to show his alarm. He tried to think clearly past the fog that seemed to have clouded his mind. There must be something he could do, but if there was, it was escaping him. "We're sitting ducks here. And the minute we step outside..."

Keyop's response was a worried series of chirps, any words lost in his anxious vocalisations. Tiny turned to face his young friend, concerned more for Keyop than himself even now. The boy was pale, looking about as good as Tiny felt. Guilt gnawed at the older man. If it hadn't been for him, Keyop wouldn't be here now, but as it was ...

The grin spread slowly across Tiny's face. That was right - Keyop was here! Tiny turned back to his control console with a new determination.

"Get going, Keyop! I'm going to drop the G-4." Tiny cut off his young friend's protest with a one handed shove that all but pushed him out of his chair. "You can chase off the Spectrans, and use your tools to clear whatever's in the intakes!"

Keyop's wide mouth split into a fierce grin to match Tiny's own. His chest swelled with pride. "I'll do it!" he promised, jumping to his feet.

The motion was a little too fast. The blood drained from the boy's already-pale face, and he swayed dangerously. Instinct overrode confusion as Tiny reached out in time to steady him. Weakly, Keyop tried to laugh.

"Got a bit of a headache," he confessed.

Tiny stared at him, struggling to focus past the throbbing in his own cranium. Slowly, he raised horrified eyes to the air vents above their heads, only now seeing the tell-tale curls of mist.

By then, of course, it was too late.

* * *

"Tiny?" Mark's voice was sharp, carrying a familiar undercurrent of tension. "Tiny, wake up!"

Tiny stirred, wishing for nothing more than a few more minutes of rest. In the last few weeks he had grown accustomed to waking gently from pleasant dreams of Katie's embrace. Now there was no such comfort. He shifted in his seat, one hand coming up to rub the side of his neck. It had developed a crick, the nagging ache vying with the unpleasant dryness in his mouth for the right to disturb his sleep.

"Tiny!"

"Go 'way, Mark," he mumbled.

"Tiny, you've got to tell us what's wrong with the Phoenix!"

The Phoenix? Beneath the throbbing of his own pulse, Tiny could hear the steady hum of his best girl in smooth flight. Distant memory stirred. Tiny's eyes squeezed tightly shut, his cheeks flushing. If he'd fallen asleep on the Phoenix again, he didn't want to know about it. How could he face the others...? Others. Hmm, surely there'd been someone else with him.

"Keyop!" Tiny's eyes snapped open. He jerked upright in his seat and barely suppressed a gasp of pain as the light stabbed into his still-aching head. Mark steadied him, a hand on his shoulder. Tiny looked up into his Commander's face, and was shocked at the fatigue he saw there. He smiled tiredly. "Hey, you got us out of there! Sorry, Commander."

Mark turned away, hiding his expression in shadows. From behind them, Tiny heard Jason's wry laugh.

"We didn't get you out, Tiny." Jason's tones were tense and self-deprecating. "They got us too!"

"What?" Tiny turned his seat so he could peer back towards Jason. The tall man was leaning over Princess and Keyop, his dark wings almost obscuring their still forms from view. Seemingly reassured by what he found, Jason looked up.

"They must have spotted us following the wyrm straight off," Jason snapped bitterly. "They were just giving us time to get ourselves deep in their territory. We didn't see a soul until we were spying on their control room. Then they jumped us as soon as Mark tried to warn you!" He nodded towards Mark. "The Commander and I just woke up ourselves."

Princess stirred as he spoke, raising her head with a quiet groan. Mark murmured a reassurance to her, before turning back to Jason. "Keyop?"

"He'll be alright, but the kid'll be groggy for a while." Jason smiled down at their friend's slight form. "He got a good lungful of knockout gas."

Mark nodded. He frowned, his blue eyes shadowed with confusion. "Okay, we're all safe. Good." He paused meaningfully. "So does anyone know how we got back on the Phoenix?"

"Not a clue," Jason shrugged. "But somehow I doubt Zoltar set us free out of the goodness of his heart!"

"I was expecting torture," Mark admitted frankly. "They could have torn the Phoenix apart."

Princess shook her head, as if trying to clear it. "He knew he couldn't keep hold of us for long, not here on Earth. The Chief knew where we were. Perhaps if we were on a Spectran planet they'd have had time ..."

Tiny barely heard the words. He was staring at his control readouts, trying to interpret the data. Far below them, the vibrant green of a tropical rainforest moved smoothly past. He closed his eyes, listening to his ship's song, and frowned. There was a stutter to the rhythm of her engines, a slight misfiring that would reduce her efficiency by a few percent, but then what could they expect after a near burnout caused by blocked intakes? Even so, it seemed unlikely that so slight a problem had alarmed the commander. A quick glance behind him showed Tiny that of the consoles in the cabin, his was the only one still active. He turned back to his readouts with determination. Even though designed for a crew of five, this was a one man ship to fly. Most of the major systems were channelled through his desk. Mark had asked what was wrong with the Phoenix; it was his job to find the answer ... if he could only find the question first.

His vision was still a little blurred from the knockout gas, and to judge by the cautious way Jason was moving, he wasn't alone in that. Still, the Phoenix's autopilot couldn't be expected to keep her in the air forever. He reached out tentatively, flicking the autopilot off and bracing himself for the slight resistance of active control levers.

"Oh, this is not good." His quiet murmur cut through the speculation in the cabin. Mark slid back into the co-pilot's seat as Tiny cautiously tested the rest of his controls.

"I wanted to land us and take stock," Mark told him tensely. "I couldn't get her to turn."

"Nah," Tiny's mouth was dry now with more than the aftertaste of sleeping gas. "You wouldn't have. We're still on autopilot, Mark. Locked on course. Someone's blocked us out of navigation."

"You mean the Phoenix is out of control?" Jason demanded, coming forward and leaning over Tiny's shoulder as if he could make sense of anything there.

"Oh no," Tiny told him bitterly. "The ship's perfectly under control. Just not ours!"

* * *

Zoltar's voice shook them out of their confusion. In the seat beside Tiny, Mark tensed, his spine becoming rigid. Tiny himself didn't bother to look up at the communications screens. He knew what he would see there: Zoltar's purple-masked face leering through a snowstorm of interference.

"Ah, G-Force. It appears that you are finally awake."

Oblivious of Tiny's commands, the Phoenix broke out of her circular holding pattern, turning in a steep bank to head inland.

Zoltar's plump limps thinned slightly in a self-satisfied smile.

"I would have hated you to have missed this."

A groggy chirrup from Keyop sent a well-concealed wave of relief through all of them. The boy rubbed at unfocused eyes, glancing up at the screen with open contempt. "What does big-ears want now?"

Mark smiled tightly, but raised a white-gloved hand to quieten him. G-Force wasn't in a position to taunt, not this time.

"Miss what, Zoltar?"

"Why, the demise of G-Force and all it stands for, of course," the Spectran exclaimed, raising a hand to his chest and affecting surprise that Mark would even ask. His humour died away and his voice became cold. "After this, your precious Chief Anderson will never threaten the mighty Spectra again."

"We're not that easy to get rid of, Zoltar!" Jason snapped, rising from his seat and taking a threatening step forward.

"Even if we were, the Chief would never give up," Princess added. "Anderson will always find others to step into our place."

"Oh, I think he might have a little trouble ... when it's discovered that G-Force not surrendered, but willingly desecrated a major temple!"

Mark gripped the edge of his console, half standing in his seat.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. Zoltar's laughter was the commander's only reply. Mark stared at the image on the screen as it faded into static. "What do you mean?" he shouted.

"Ah, Commander?" Tiny had been flicking through the ship's exterior sensors on his own screens. The process was slow, each viewpoint taking a full second longer than normal to come up. Now he directed the image from behind and above them onto the main screen. "I think you need to see this."

"What the ...?" Jason demanded, his voice dying away in confusion. He turned back to his sensor display and thumped it angrily when he found it dormant.

The two Spectran mini-mechas flanked the Phoenix, hovering in a neat V-shaped formation. Instinctively, the G-Force members braced themselves for an attack, but the alien craft held their positions with ominous stillness.

"Don't understand," Keyop admitted, his voice still thick with sleep.

Mark stood, pacing the tight confines of the cabin, avoiding Princess's outstretched hand, and Jason's inquiring look. "Think how this looks to anyone outside," he grated eventually.

Princess gasped, raising a hand to her face. "We're leading a Spectran attack force?"

Mark shook his head, not denying her conclusion but impatient with the discussion.

"Princess, Jason, get our sensors and weapons back online!" He glanced at Keyop, but the boy was still struggling to keep his eyes open and his head from nodding to the console. Mark's gaze slid across him and his commands continued without hesitation. "Tiny, tell me where we're going. And then sort out navigation. We need to get the Phoenix back under control."

* * *

Jason and Princess acknowledged Mark's orders with quick nods. Tiny stared at his own console as they turned back to theirs, hating himself for being the one to end their optimism. But it was his duty to report what his readouts showed, and concealing the truth wasn't going to get them out of trouble any sooner.

"Mark, that's not going to happen."

He felt the team freeze, chilled by the certainty in his voice. Tiny looked up at them with despair in his green eyes.

"This isn't a hardware problem that we can just work around. Zoltar's controlling the ship's mainframe. He's the one controlling our weapons, navigation, everything. When we call up an image on the viewscreen, he's letting us do it. That's what's causing the delay. And short of pulling the plug on the Phoenix's computer system and resetting to factory protocols, I don't see a way to break free."

Mark was staring, open-mouthed. Tiny felt himself flushing slightly, aware that he seldom made so long a speech while they were on a mission. But no one understood the Phoenix's systems like him, and everyone on the team knew it.

"How?" Princess gasped.

"Some sort of virus?" Keyop suggested muzzily.

Tiny nodded, aware that his own grasp of computer systems was not quite all it could be. "Probably. They had time while we were out to infect the Phoenix. If they've been working on preparing this for a while, waiting for the opportunity ..."

"How doesn't matter." Mark's announcement cut through the chatter. The Commander's shock had faded, or perhaps merely been suppressed by the necessity of the moment. He had rallied and the determination was back in his voice. "If it was something our computer's firewall or antivirals could handle, we wouldn't be talking about it. Since it isn't, there's not much point in talking about it anyway. We need to find alternatives."

He sank turned his own chair to face the front, clearly deep in thought, and the rest of the team followed his example, falling silent to concentrate on assessing alternate scenarios. Tiny prodded cautiously at his own controls, never sure which commands would be obeyed and which wouldn't. He was hardly surprised though when his query to the autopilot returned an answer at once. Zoltar had gloated about their imminent demise. He had no intention of concealing their pre-programmed destination.

"Angkor Wat," Tiny announced into the silence that permeated the cabin. Mark looked at him with dawning horror, and then mastered it, nodding silently.

The great temple complex at Angkor Wat. Sacred for a millennium, thronged with tourists from around the world. If the Phoenix was seen to lead a Spectran attack against the Buddhist temples, then not only would an entire world religion denounce G-Force and all its ilk, but almost every world government would rise up against the slaughter of their holidaying citizens. Zoltar hadn't been boasting when he claimed the whole world could turn against Anderson for this.

Jason cursed with a vehemence unaccustomed even for him. "One, two bird missiles in the middle of that, and the whole city will go down."

"Erm," Tiny closed his eyes briefly and then kept them locked ahead, avoiding his friends' eyes. "I think, in fact, that we're programmed to crash on it."

"Crash?"

"Great," Jason snapped. He gritted his teeth, forced to the admission. "Well, I hope inspiration is striking for someone, because I'm out of ideas."

"Tiny," Princess's voice was soft, attempting to reassure the others as much as herself with a semblance of calm. "You mentioned a computer reset? There must be a plug we can pull."

"In mid-flight?" The incredulous demand spilled out of Tiny before he could stop it.

"The Phoenix isn't really all that aerodynamic, Princess," Mark volunteered. "If her thrusters aren't perfectly balanced every moment, then her wings aren't going to keep her level."

"Or airborne," Jason added, shuddering as he remembered his own few attempts to fly the Phoenix - and that had been with computer control.

Tiny calmed himself enough to answer her question rather than merely protest against it. "There is an override switch - under Mark's console, in fact - but ... the computers will take half an hour to reboot from a total reset, and that's assuming the virus can be flushed by a reset anyhow. I can keep her balanced on thrusters for a few minutes, but that long? Forget it!"

"So manual control is an option? At least for a short while?" Mark demanded, sounding only half-inclined to believe him.

Tiny shrugged. He might be certain of few things in life, but his ability to fly the Phoenix was one of them. "For level flight, in calm weather, yeah. For a bit. Don't even think of asking me to land her."

The commander hesitated, disappointed but knowing that even that much was more than anyone else in the world could give him. "How long until we're there?"

Tiny peered at his functioning instruments, praying that their readout was reliable. "A few minutes. We're well into Cambodia already. Whatever we're going to do, it had better be fast, Commander."

Tiny could see Mark's mind working, filing this datum with all his others. The commander's blue eyes were dark with weariness, although whether that was the after-effects of the knockout drug or the knowledge of what was coming, Tiny couldn't be sure. Mark turned to Jason.

"I'm assuming we can't get to our self-destruct?" he asked simply.

Jason shrugged back. The tall man's expression was stoic. Save others first, then consider themselves. That had always been the G-Force way. "Doesn't look like it. Without the computer ..."

"Sixty seconds!" Tiny snapped. He hesitated, then straightened in his seat, suddenly determined. He'd hoped so badly for another option. But there was none. It was up to him now. "Mark, I need you and the others to get up to the bubble and jump clear before I do this. I told you I can't land her, and I'll need to take her up to full speed to get as much lift as possible." He winced, trying not to imagine what came afterwards. "Jumping out into that would be like hitting a brick wall."

The team stared at him.

"No," Keyop said simply.

"Everyone strap in," Mark ordered as if Tiny hadn't spoken. "This could get bumpy!"

Tiny glanced over at his commander with a kind of despair. And then they were out of time. Tiny felt the ship begin to descend, her flaps moving to shape the air around her.

"Mark, the master computer override! Pull it."

Mark undid his seatbelt in a moment, diving beneath the Commander's console and smashing the reinforced glass cover with a forceful blow from his elbow. The big, two handled lever was painted in yellow and red, surrounded by warning signs. He hesitated, still not sure that Tiny could take the strain of flying the Phoenix unaided, knowing there was no alternative. He pulled.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

The world tilted.

It bucked, rocking from side to side and backwards and forwards with dizzying speed.

And then the main engines kicked in, accelerating the Phoenix to her highest sub-fiery speed and throwing her crew back into their seats.

Tiny had no eyes to spare for Mark as the Commander scrambled back to his seat and fastened his seatbelt with a groan of discomfort. Every sense Tiny possessed, every fragment of his concentration, was focused on his task.

His hands flew over the suddenly responsive manual controls, balancing thruster and attitude jets, firing half a dozen different systems at any one time, struggling to anticipate their effects and balance his response without overshooting. Information flashed past on the screens so rapidly that his conscious brain barely had time to register it. He absorbed it on an instinctual level, flying his ship by the feel of her, and by the sound of her straining engines. He felt the peaks of the domed temples at Angkor pass no more than a hundred metres below. The Phoenix's few computer-independent sensor systems reported the buildings shaking as the supersonic whirlwind she dragged thundered over the earth below. Sunk deep into the superhuman concentration required for his task, Tiny accepted the information as if came from his own vision.

Slowly the ship's bucking and protesting flight path levelled into a smooth forward motion, and a side to side rocking that grew steadily weaker. Sweating profusely, Tiny's manipulations grew ever more subtle. Anticipation became more important than reaction. Almost there. Almost.

The nose of the ship settled into smooth flight, and although Tiny's hands remained in constant motion, the task was easier now. Air currents could be predicted by the slightest deflection of the Phoenix's nose. The constant buffeting of cloud was at least presaged by their fluffy whiteness on the screens in front of him. The Phoenix shredded those clouds behind her, riding her own vortices, high enough, fast enough and stable enough now that no more than two of three thrusters at a time were needed to control her reactions.

The noises of the world returned to his ears, his senses loses their narrow focus. He began to breathe again, his chest suddenly tight as he realised he had stopped. The darkness of the cabin was illuminated only by the monitors at his station, life support sacrificed along with every other system except for navigation. For the first time since taking control, he registered the presence of his friends, their breaths coming in short terrified gasps, their white faces partially reflected in the viewscreens ahead of him.

No on spoke to him, no one daring to disturb his concentration, but now they began to murmur between themselves.

"We're headed inland," Princess pointed out urgently, although her information was limited to the same view they could all see through the forward monitors. "Towards the mountains. Are the mechas following us?"

Jason shifted in his chair, and Tiny guessed that he was trying to peer out through the limiting viewscreens. "No way to be sure. They'll probably follow just to see what happens."

"Tiny can't hold this for long," Mark added grimly, stealing a glance at his pilot's sweating face. "If we can't land, we need to find somewhere safe to crash."

"Safe!" Jason barked a brief laugh. Safe for civilians, perhaps. Hardly safe for the team themselves. Tiny stole a glance at the quiet man, and the ship trembled in response to even such a brief lapse of attention. As Tiny had guessed from Jason's tone, his eyes held the same calm acceptance of death with which he approached their most dangerous missions.

"There has to be some way to get out of this!" Princess exclaimed, and in the reflections Tiny could see her with one arm around the still-shaky Keyop.

There was silence for a long moment. "Even if Tiny could take us low enough to drop the vehicles, there's no way they'd survive being released at this speed," Mark said finally in a quiet voice. "And he was right, jumping would be like flying into a brick wall. We're here, and we're in this together."

Tiny's stomach clenched. Mark was talking about the team's death. They had always known it would come, of course, but it was different to know the abstract, and to see the physical looming with long minutes in which to accept its inevitability. Almost without thinking he had angled the fidgeting, reluctant bird towards the mountains Princess has spotted. The barren and uninhabited peaks grew closer by the moment, the air rising in front of them bringing with it turbulence that shook the ship. The Phoenix slid sidewise down an air current, and shook again as Tiny powered up the attitude thrusters to level her. Once again, he sank into the concentration of his task, becoming almost one with the Phoenix.

Almost one. A state of union with his damaged bird, almost certain that deep down he felt her panic. He tried to make his commands firm and decisive. Was it possible? With the controlling authority of the mainframe suppressed, was the personality that emerged in the Fiery Phoenix making herself known?

He gasped, the germ of an idea suddenly in mind. Again, the Phoenix tremored with his inattention, and the eyes of the team were suddenly points of pressure on Tiny's back. He kept his face forward, hands and eyes glued to the task, but he managed to whisper the word.

"Fireball!"

* * *

For once there was no discussion. Their options had narrowed beyond that now. A hand gesture from Mark sent Jason forward, and Princess towards her bike in the port nacelle. Mark himself helped Keyop to the starboard nacelle, making sure the boy was strapped in and at least partially alert.

Mark paused as he passed back through the main cabin. Tiny felt his commander studying his grey, perspiration-sheened face with a look of desperate resignation.

"Get going, Mark," Tiny grated. "I can't hold this for much longer!"

"Tiny..."

Mark's voice died away, and without another look behind him the Commander turned toward his own vehicle.

"All right, team." Mark's voice was cool and controlled as it emerged from Tiny's wrist activator. There was no trace of uncertainty. "When the Fiery Phoenix takes us, we're going to try for low and slow - understood? Operation Fireball is dangerous at low speed, let alone this one." He didn't add that reducing their velocity would give Tiny his only slim chance for escape. He didn't need to.

Tiny took a deep breath, flicked the button that removed the stops on the throttle, and pushed the engines into overdrive.

* * *

When the Phoenix takes us. When we lose ourselves in the oneness of a burning dream. When five become one. When machine and man merge and become something more. Something indefinable. Something wonderful.

The Fiery Phoenix was screaming as she emerged from the shapeless flames that had engulfed her namesake. Even in her primal paradigm, she could feel the wrongness. Her wings had been clipped, her sense of balance and ease in the air stripped from her.

She screamed again as she fell, her wings trailing flame in an eye-straining and wind-whipped trail.

But then they were there for her: the thoughts that guided her, strengthened her, and protected her even when she was sleeping.

Deep inside her, she felt a burning determination. The passion for life was there, as strong as ever, determined to preserve both the vital power within the Phoenix herself, and the lives of those she was sworn to protect. She felt the hatred of her eternal nemesis rise within her, and without even thinking steadied in her flight. She turned towards the two avatars of that power that followed uncertainly in her wake. She knew her movements were awkward, clumsy, and in deep frustration she spat fire at her pursuers. Something shifted deep within her, in that strange half-reality which joined her physical form to the soul of the firebird. The fire that she spat shed its golden sheath, solidified, became a reality that the Spectran mini-mechas could not avoid.

-Bird missiles-

The thought rang clearly through her, the first rational thought that the creature of pure instinct had felt since her rebirth in the flames. She recognised the voice, the harsh tones of her aggression, even if the words were lost on her.

-With no computer control to fight against, she managed to fire bird missiles!-

The thought was carried on a surge of elation, the strong emotion lifting it free of that segment of her in which it had originated.

The Phoenix hesitated in mid-air, discomforted by the sensation that parts of herself - woken by the angry elation - were drawing apart. The wind caught at her, and she spread her wings desperately, trying to adjust to her peculiar disorientation. Why couldn't she fly straight? What was wrong with her?

-Calm.- A new thought. The voice that coaxed her through the air, and told her when she was free to dance. The voice of the wind beneath her wings. -Low and slow and calm.-

She felt the other parts of her - both with her, and oddly separated from her now - join that call. Low and slow and calm, they insisted, and the Phoenix obeyed them, barely aware enough of herself to realise that there was another choice.

It wasn't easy, but the Phoenix had broad wings. She spread them to their fullest, gliding where she could, using that other power - the gift of her flight - where she couldn't.

-Hold her.-

An instruction from her guiding voice to the other presences that shared her essence. For a moment the firm hand that led her onwards withdrew a little, and she felt panic as once again something shifted within her. But then another part of her was rising to her forethoughts - the strong voice of command. From this essence too she felt the confidence to dance in the air, but it could not lend her the grace or strength to do so.

-Low and slow- The Phoenix had never disobeyed a command from this voice; she tried her hardest to fight against the relentless demands of uncaring gravity. Once again she screamed, beginning a helpless fall.

The wind flared under her, or perhaps it was simply that her wings began to shape the wind above and beneath them. The movement within her had stopped. The guiding hand was back. She was whole again, every part of her concentrating on keeping her from the cold ground below.

Her flight levelled, and now she saw the mountains above and around her. Terror flared within her. It was by chance alone that she had not met a flaming end against a sheer wall already.

The voice of command spoke again, and the anticipation that had simmered in the back of her mind suddenly flared full force. The Phoenix felt herself submerged in the instant demands of the minds bonded to hers.

-Fireball!-

* * *

Born in fire, torn apart in a moment of exquisite pain.

G-Force had practised this, trained themselves in the strength of will required for it, even been forced to it in combat - and it was still agony when the Phoenix screamed in their minds. They tore themselves free of the gestalt, and in the same moment, their vehicles wrenched themselves from their mountings. Four infant Phoenix wrapped the flames of their mother around them as they were born, a fragment of the mother-ship's indefinable essence carried in minds still half-bound to her gestalt.

They spread wings as unclipped and unhindered as the will of their pilots. They glided free of physical constraints and settled to the ground, supported on flames that faded as they touched the cold earth. To leave a car that skimmed the rim of a precipice, its wheels already turning at speed before it made contact with the uneven surface. To leave a motorcycle that landed with its front wheel raised, a spontaneous wheelie to celebrate the joy of continued life. To leave an orange bubble that floated perilously above the same chasm the car had avoided, and a jet which circled it, coaxing the unsteady craft to the safe ground on which its siblings waited.

And above them, the scream of the Fiery Phoenix faded into the distance. Only one hand remained to guide her. One voice to coax her onwards now and it wasn't enough. She fell, out of control, carried onwards by momentum alone. Through a curtain of flame she saw the cliff-face looming ahead of her, and knew only that it was her unavoidable doom. Resignation flared through her, and a distant desperation heard only as a far away whisper. And then there was a sensation of change within her, a sensation of emptiness, and then no sensation at all.

* * *

Mark was settling the G-1 into a vertical landing beside the G-4 when the mental shockwave struck. Keyop's flight had been unsteady, the boy's grasp over his fledgling Phoenix tenuous at best. Mark found a moment to be relieved that he'd edged his youngest team-mate away from the precipice, before fire filled his mind and his hands tensed on their controls. His beloved jet landed heavily, buckling its landing gear, but for once Mark spared it no thought.

An orange-red fireball lit the sky, its origin a good ten miles away. Even at her slowest, the Phoenix had eaten up ground by the second.

Mark stared at the flame-filled horizon with a kind of dull horror, and then he could resist no longer. He fell into the red hot furnace that had ignited in his own head.

* * *

Cliffs towered above him, glinting in the ghost-white moonlight. White ice sheaved the sheer stone, the crevice between its two faces no more than a metre wide.

Tiny lay at the bottom of the fissure, every nerve shrieking in agony. Beneath him, a thick drift of snow provided a cushion that had shaped itself around him. He held himself still upon it, not willing to move. How long had he been unconscious? How long had he lain here, unwilling to acknowledge the physical world and the pain it contained?

His decision to raise his seat into the Phoenix's top bubble had almost been the end of them all. His already anxious firebird had felt the mechanisms working within her, and Mark had barely held her aloft while Tiny was distracted. At the time, he hadn't believed for a moment that it would make any difference.

The seldom-used procedure had been designed to provide 360 degree visibility for vehicle pick-ups. The fact that it also placed the Phoenix's pilot on her outer skin was mere coincidence. A coincidence that gave Tiny his only chance.

He remembered the moment when the Fiery Phoenix had dissolved into Operation Fireball. For an instant he had watched the Phoenix's offspring spiral groundwards. Then he remembered fighting for control of his wounded bird, and losing. With the Phoenix's screaming pounding at his mind, it had taken all his strength of will to hit the bubble's opening control.

Flames had wrapped themselves around him, caressing his uniform's fabric and searching for some way inside. He had felt the skin on his face reddening, starting to burn as the superheated air curled up inside his full-face visor.

The deck of the Phoenix fell away under him, and the wall of air hit him like a full-body sledgehammer blow. Even in her death throws, the Phoenix had been slicing through the air like a shark through water. She shaped the air above and beneath her, its flows not far from supersonic. And now those flows threw Tiny backwards and upwards, clear of his dying ship but with every breath knocked from his body.

He struggled to retain consciousness, straining to draw in breath but unable to find any ease in the thin, fast moving air.

When the Fiery Phoenix's final scream tore through his still-linked mind, Tiny already teetered on the edge of blackness. He wasn't even aware of falling.

A miracle that he'd survived at all really. And one that he didn't expect to maintain. Already he'd dragged his arm to his face, only to discover that his wrist communicator was smashed beyond repair. There was no help coming.

He lay on his back and peered upwards at the crescent moon just visible through the smoke-tainted clouds far above. The light was fading now, twilight drawing across the mountains of South-East Asia. He didn't remember falling down this hundred-metre crevice, although the throbbing pain that engulfed three of his limbs suggested that he had bounced between its sides like a carelessly thrown toy. Small chance of anyone seeing him from above, small chance of anyone finding him at all, no matter how long they spent searching the Phoenix's erratic flight path.

Slowly, painfully, he used his one remaining good arm to push himself upright. Sitting was agony, and he gasped for air. Broken ribs? Possibly.

Shuffling backwards on his buttocks, dragging his left arm and legs, he eased himself to a position where he could lean against one wall of the crevice. A couple of moments later, he shifted again, awkwardly dipping his right hand into his left pocket and pulling out the uncomfortably hard lump there.

He turned it over in his hand, staring at it in disbelief, and a sudden blaze of returning memory. As his fingers ran over the surface, lights lit on the surface of the black cube. Katie's lovers' link.

Katie.

He closed his eyes in realisation. Anderson would have to tell her what had happened, and he knew she would grieve for him. He only hoped that the Chief would never be able to tell her the truth; he hadn't thought of her.

In all that had happened since he woke on the Phoenix, he hadn't thought of her once.

Oh, he loved her. But he had to face reality. Ultimately, G-Force meant more to him - and that was unfair to any woman.

Ironic that such clarity came only when it was too late to act upon it.

Tiny sighed, leaned back against the crevice wall, and waited.

* * *

"Mark!"

The voice rousing him was both familiar and unwelcome.

"Mark, answer me."

The G-1's canopy creaked a little wider open, letting in a cool draft of mountain air. It caressed Mark's cheeks, cooling the burning sensation there.

"Mark, I know you're awake. There's no use pretending."

The stern tone hotwired Mark's brain, forcing his eyes open as it had done since Mark was a small child. He squinted against the light, confused. Anderson? In the field? God, they must have scared him.

Anderson saw the confusion, and the returning rationality. The chief moved back a little, no longer leaning into the cockpit.

"The Phoenix was seen being chased over Angkor. Then she vanished from our radar."

Mark heard the unspoken fear in that last statement. He straightened slightly in his seat, and made out the three G-Force craft parked neatly around his own. He could hear other people moving about, around and between the vehicles. "The others?"

"We found the four of you here. The others will be fine. All of you simply seem to be exhausted from going fiery."

Mark closed his eyes. Four. No, that was wrong. And the mental shock had been more than simple exhaustion.

"Tiny?" he demanded.

He heard the irrational hope in his own voice. He felt Anderson hesitate, reluctant to crush it.

"We haven't found him."

Eyes still closed, Mark nodded.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

Predictably, Jason was the first to storm out of Center Neptune. Keyop followed him without a word, and Princess hurried after the boy. Mark gave Anderson an angry look.

This was not the time to try to debrief the team. This was the time for them to be together. Drawing strength from one another because, God knew, they had little enough on their own.

Anderson raised a hand in a gesture of dismissal, as unable as Mark was to find the right words.

Mark's red convertible eased its way between the city blocks, its vibrant paint seeming a blood-dark scarlet in the dim streetlights. Dawn and sunset had come and gone while G-Force was away. Mark didn't care. The shadows matched his mood. He seemed to be moving in a bubble of light, the world outside it faded into darkness.

He wasn't surprised to find lights blazing in Princess's bar, or to see the 'Closed' sign that adorned it. He pushed the door open without pausing, and took his place between Jason and Keyop at the bar. Princess poured him a soft drink without a word, and he sipped at it without so much as acknowledging her presence.

There was silence. The first rush of tears had passed long before. Now there was simply nothing to say. No one wanted to acknowledge the reality of it.

"I don't believe it."

Of them all, Jason was the last one Mark would have expected to break the silence. Keyop looked up sharply, and Princess almost dropped the glass she had been absently wiping free of water marks. Mark raised his eyes slowly from his drink to his friend's face. Jason was still staring at his own glass - one that held something rather stronger than Mark's.

"Jason - "

"I agree." Keyop's interjection cut Mark off. He gave an insistent warble. "We would know."

"That's it!" Jason's grip tightened, and the glass in his hand cracked under the strain. Princess yelped out a protest, hurrying to take it from him before the liquid remaining inside could spill. Jason leaned over the bar and grabbed a towel to wipe the stickiness from his hand. He looked around at the rest of them. "That's it. We were still at least half connected to the Fiery Phoenix. So was Tiny. We'd have known if he was still aboard when ..." His voice trailed off, and the certainty in his initial assertions wavered in the face of the explosion they'd all seen.

Mark turned helplessly to Princess, glancing at her torn expression before turning back to Jason, not sure what to say. Not even sure what he believed. The sense of wrongness that permeated his memory of the day's events was too powerful to isolate any one of its causes. He rubbed a hand over his cheeks remembering the burning sensation he'd felt on waking. The Center Neptune medical staff hadn't been able to find any cause for it. He'd guessed rather than been told that they thought it might be a psychosomatic symptom of his link to the dying Phoenix.

"What do you want me to do, Jason? Tell the chief that we have a funny feeling?"

We. There, he'd admitted it.

"Yeah!" Jason twisted the bar towel between his hands, wringing it into a tight knot. His expression was almost a snarl, instinctively attacking to cover his own doubt. "Exactly that, Mark! Because the chief might have a parcel of scientific geniuses working for him, but I don't believe any of them knew what the hell they were doing when they built the Phoenix. They don't know what she can do ... what she feels like. Only we know that." He paused, struggling for words as his anger faded. His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. "We know."

Princess seemed torn. "I want to believe it." She looked from Jason to Keyop. "But the chief had people searching - surely they'd have - "

"Found him?" Keyop demanded. He spread his arms wide to indicate the huge swathe of mountainous terrain the Phoenix had covered in its dying minutes. "Big place!"

"We all felt Tiny shift something in the Phoenix." Jason stood, dropping the towel on the bar-top, and began to pace the limited confines of the room. "He could have used the top bubble. He could have got out."

Mark stood too, reaching out to grasp Jason's arm as the other man passed him, and stopping Jason in his tracks. He spoke quietly, hating himself for saying this. "Even if he got out. What are the chances that he survived the fall?" He released Jason, striding away from the bar himself now and pausing in front of the windows. Blinds kept the night outside, and the shared grief of the team private inside. He stared into the pitch darkness that spilled between their slats. "You felt what the Phoenix crash did to all of us. What it would have done to Tiny. He didn't answer his communicator, Jason." His voice cracked. "In that terrain, we'll probably never even find his body."

Princess started to sob quietly behind him, and he heard Keyop's gulping tears too. Jason came forward, wordlessly laying a hand on Mark's shoulder.

* * *

The door bursting open was a profoundly unwelcome intrusion into their enclosed little world. A wave of cold air blew a figure in through the doorway, and carried with it the noise of the traffic outside to break the grief-filled silence.

Princess's hands slammed down on the bar, the forceful side of her personality coming to the fore in the light of this trespass.

"We're closed!"

The newcomer brushed her wind-blown blonde hair out of her face as the door closed behind her. She raised blue eyes that flashed with a fury equal to Princess's.

"Don't give me that! I know you must know. Where is he hiding? Where is the bastard?"

"Katie," Keyop whispered, shocked.

Katie hesitated, her anger waning as she began to pick up the thick emotion in the atmosphere. Even so, she rallied, and railed, "If he didn't have the guts to explain to me, he could at least have returned the link. He didn't have to throw it out of his 'plane!"

They stared at her, and then Jason took a step towards her, his grey-blue eyes liquid with tears he would never shed in company.

"Katie - "

This time it was Mark who touched Jason's shoulder, stilling his words with the gesture. He was the commander. This was his task. Well, Anderson's technically, but the chief had never known about Katie. Now, he never would.

Katie was looking from one of them to the other uncertainly. She took a step backwards towards the closed door, wrapping her arms around herself.

"What's happened?" she asked nervously.

What could he tell her? What would she believe?

"You know Tiny's a pilot?"

Katie nodded, her own face pale now as she took in the tears on Keyop's face. "The link I gave him. It came on mid-afternoon. I thought ... I thought he'd changed his mind. But when I checked the location ... He must have tossed it out of his 'plane, flushed it, something ..." Her voice trailed off as Mark's deep blue eyes met hers for the first time.

"Tiny's plane crashed today." Simple words, if he could keep to simple words he could get them out. "He's still missing."

Now why did he say that? Why didn't he add the 'believed dead' that Anderson would have used without hesitation?

Katie's face drained of blood. She swayed and would have fallen if Jason hadn't moved faster than any man should to catch her. She was hardly in a condition to notice. He scooped her up in his arms, carrying her to a table seat, and lowered her into one of the soft chairs. Mark followed, standing beside the table, and Princess and Keyop came from around the bar to join them. United in grief.

Tears streaked her cheeks. She gazed into nowhere. "When he didn't come this evening, I was so angry. I was ready to hate him for leaving me like that." She buried her face in her hands. "I thought he hated me already."

"Never!" The exclamation burst from all four of them simultaneously. No one who knew Tiny could doubt that he had been hurting since he realised he must let her go.

Keyop stepped forward, tentatively touching her hands where they covered her face and forcing her to lower them.

"He kept your link with him."

Mark frowned, the repetition of the term finally registering. "Link?"

Katie reached into her handbag, pulling out the small back cube and holding it up for them to see. Mark felt a sudden surge of anger, not sure himself who it was directed at.

"Tiny had a homing beacon on the Phoenix?"

"It was off! I checked!" Keyop hastened to chirp. "Nothing to see from outside."

"It would have shown up on our sensors if it was on, Mark," Princess added, equally quickly. She brushed a hand over her dark eyes, wiping away the tears that trembled on her long lashes. "If it had been sending out any kind of signal, we would have known about it before anyone else did." She sighed, shaking her head. "This time they just got the better of us, Mark. It's happened before."

Mark was torn between irritation and sorrow. Okay, so perhaps the presence of the link hadn't changed anything, but even so... "Tiny knew better."

Katie was looking from Mark to the others in confusion.

Jason frowned. "This doesn't make sense."

"None of this makes sense," Katie wailed, and Keyop started sobbing again, unable to maintain composure in the face of her distress.

Mark hesitated, torn between wanting to comfort her and not knowing how to go about it. He put an arm around Keyop's shoulders instead, shifting the boy aside to allow Princess to slip in beside Katie and give her a one-armed hug.

"No," Jason's voice was firm. "I mean it." He reached down and picked the link out of her hand. "Katie, you said this thing lit up mid-afternoon?"

She nodded miserably. "I guess it must have been triggered by ... by the crash."

Jason tossed the link to his commander, and Mark caught it instinctively, oblivious to Katie's gasp of concern for the delicate device. Mark weighed it in his hand, looking down at it doubtfully. In his mind, he saw the fireball which the Phoenix had become. "It doesn't look very robust."

Jason rolled his eyes. There was a new light in them which baffled his friends. "It would have been fine if Tiny kept it inside his uniform. Look, I know we're all jet-lagged, but think about the timing. Mid-afternoon _here_." He paused meaningfully. "Five hours after the crash."

Mark's eyes widened. Princess was on her feet and headed towards the bar's computer unit even before he tossed her the link. She snatched it from midair, plugging it into the console and pulling up the information on its twin from the satellite network it answered to.

Mark turned back to Katie, his expression intent and in his tones the clipped voice of G-Force's commander. "How far can this thing be localised?"

"A square kilometre or so. Why - ?"

"Still a lot of ground to cover in that terrain," Mark noted grimly.

"A hell of a lot better than tracing our entire flight path," Jason pointed out.

Mark nodded. "It's been a long, cold night there," he cautioned, worried by the grin that had split Keyop's face and by the relief on Princess's. He couldn't let them build up false hope. "We still don't know what we're going to find."

Princess turned from the console to face him. "But we have to go look, don't we?"

"Yeah." Mark lifted his wrist communicator to his lips. "Chief, we have new coordinates. Princess is sending them to you now. Can you have a fast jet meet us at headquarters in five minutes?"

"Mark - " Anderson's voice was thick with weariness. Mark cut him off.

"We're going with your say so or without it, Chief. But it'll be a lot quicker if you lend us a plane."

Anderson gave in, confused no doubt, but recognising that Mark was not prepared to argue the point.

"Five minutes, Commander."

Mark heard the click of the channel closing and turned towards the door, resisting the urge to transmute there and then.

A slight cough from Jason stopped him. Katie was staring at them with wide eyes, her gaze scanning each of them in turn. The personnel of G-Force were the stuff of news reports and playground fantasies alike. Tiny had boasted that his girlfriend was intelligent, and it would have taken a true idiot not to have made the connection after all she had seen and heard.

She looked towards Mark, recognising G-Force's invincible commander.

"You're not just Tiny's friends, are you? You're his team-mates."

Mark nodded, silently.

"And I can never tell anyone. Just as he never told me." It wasn't a question. She looked down at her hands, struggling to cope with all she'd just learnt. "I understand. Just go find him, Commander."

* * *

The cotton sheets and thick mattress felt comfortable under Tiny's bulk. Of course, he'd grown heartily sick of them nonetheless in the two weeks since he'd been brought back to headquarters.

Even for someone with his accelerated healing, a broken arm and two broken legs were not a laughing matter. Not to mention the concussion injuries to his tissues, and the deep shock that had originated not only from his untreated wounds, but also from the mental contact he had held with the Phoenix until almost the last moment.

The new Phoenix was finished already, he knew. She would rise from the ashes, transcending her physical shell, and born as much from the collective will of G-Force as from mere technology. The team was eager, raring and ready to go. Okay, so they'd suffered one of their occasional defeats, but as it always had before, that only made more determined to take the fight back to Spectra. All they needed now was their pilot, fit and back on the team.

Tiny had been more dead than alive when the newly-concentrated search teams had peered down the crevice and spotted him unconscious there. He hadn't even been aware of small Keyop jumping down beside him, wings flaring in the confined space to slow his fall. And he'd completely missed being winched out of the hole, his lover's link safely tucked into Keyop's utility belt.

It had been on the table beside his bed when he woke. Dark and deactivated, but there. He'd barely noticed, with the rest of the team around him, cheering his return to consciousness.

It was only later that Keyop had told the story, and Tiny learnt that Katie, the woman he had hardly considered when he should have been thinking of her the hardest, had saved his life. And suffered a full two day investigation and interrogation for her troubles.

Mark and the others had remained tight-lipped about how they felt about her. On the one hand, that was probably a good sign. If they, or the chief for that matter, had disapproved then he would certainly have known about it. On the other hand, Tiny couldn't help getting the impression that Katie herself had been silent on the matter. What did that mean?

The confusion had been bad enough when he'd known he must leave her for her own sake. Now ...

But today was the day. The day he found out. The first day that the medical staff had agreed he could spend the evening out of bed, and that Anderson had agreed that he could leave the base. On the proviso that one of his team-mates would drive him and remain close, of course. But if he couldn't count on G-Force for confidentiality, who could he count on?

He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for the crutches he still used for balance, just as Mark and Jason wandered into the hospital room without knocking. Tiny rolled his eyes at them, knowing that a protest would do no good. "So, you're both coming to watch the catastrophe?" he joked weakly.

He didn't fool them for a moment, but he saw the decision in both faces to ignore his nerves and play along. Jason slipped behind him, giving him a careful shove to help him get his weight over the crutches.

"How on Earth do the nurses manage to get you up and down without a strong arm around, big guy?"

Mark smiled. "He just bats those big eyes at them, and they would shift Heaven and Earth for him."

Usually it would have been the right thing to say. Tiny prided himself on his ability to charm the opposite sex. Today though ...

Mark sensed his hesitation, and his expression became less mischievous and more apologetic and serious.

"Jason and I will drop you at the restaurant and go lounge in the bar downstairs for a while. Call us if you need us." He clapped his hands together, and his tone became brisk. "Well, we'd better get moving if we don't want to make Tiny late for his dinner date. so, Jase, I guess we've got to the big question of the evening - are you driving, or do I get to take us all for a spin?"

Jason snorted. "In your dreams, Mark."

* * *

Her eyes were the clearest blue Tiny had ever seen. At times they reflected the vibrant blue of the sky, at others the cool depths of the ocean around Center Neptune.

He'd never seen them grey with caution.

She'd run to him when she'd seen him in the door to the restaurant, almost knocking him off his crutches. She'd kissed him with as much passion as they'd ever shared, and he had known it was the real thing. This time they were in love.

But then she'd hesitated, nodding wary acknowledgements to Mark and Jason as they waved goodbye, and he'd realised that perhaps love wasn't always enough.

They sat in silence as the waiter came with their menus and hovered until they'd placed their order.

Tiny sipped nervously at the water in front of him, more for want of anything else to do than out of any particular thirst.

"So, I hear you got to see where I work." It was a lousy opening gambit, but it was the need to break the silence had become overwhelming.

Katie sniffed, her quick temper flaring - not with him but at the massive construct of World Security. "If you call a two day interrogation in a single guestroom 'seeing'."

Tiny winced. How did you respond to a statement like that?

"I'd already told Mark that I could keep a secret - they obviously couldn't take my word for it." Katie brushed a stray lock of blonde hair back behind one ear. Her face was a picture of indignation. Then she looked up at Tiny and her voice softened. "All I wanted was to see you. And at the end of it all, they wouldn't even tell me if I passed muster."

Tiny blinked, his mouth running away with him before his brain could tell it to stop. "Of course you do. You wouldn't be here if - "

He stopped suddenly, hearing himself speak. Katie was staring at him, horrified.

"You mean if they'd decided I was a security risk, they'd have kept me ... What about my life? I have things to do. Responsibilities."

"Think of their responsibilities." Tiny lowered his voice, and he spoke wearily, sadly. For once he was struggling to be articulate, all pretence fallen away. "Think of one life weighed against those of the team, and everyone the team will save. This is total war."

Katie nodded, but with reluctant understanding rather than agreement. She sipped at her fruit juice, clearly trying to decide what to say.

The waiter interrupted her, bringing their food and forcing them both to silence once more. Tiny dismissed the man with a brisk shake of his head when he asked if he could bring them anything more. Katie was already picking at her food disconsolately.

"The team," she said eventually, keeping her voice quiet. "Your team."

"Yeah."

"And all those times you backed out on me?"

"I was needed."

"And when you said you couldn't see me any more?"

Tiny felt stricken by the memory. His face folded into an expression of misery. "It was unfair to keep leaving you at home, never knowing if I'd come back. It was unfair to put you in danger from Spectra by being with you." His voice lowered to little more than a hoarse whisper. "It was unfair to the rest of the team to worry about ruining your life, when I should have worried about costing them theirs."

She laid down her fork, and now her blue eyes met his. Held them. She'd had time to think about this. Time to go through all the arguments a thousand times. Now she challenged him to think on the spot, asking the one question he'd not dared ask himself since he'd woken.

"Has any of that changed?"

"No. Except that now you know." He broke eye contact, knowing that what he had to say would hurt her. "And now I know that, when the chips are down," - he fiddled with his food, chasing a pea around the plate with his fork - "the team is the most important thing in my world." He heard a stifled sob from across the table, and looked up wretchedly, forcing himself to finish. "And always will be."

There were tears on her face.

"I love you, Tiny. I think I always will." She stood, moving around the table so she could plant a kiss on his forehead. He leaned back in his chair, looking up helplessly into her achingly sad face. She almost whispered the words into his ear. "But you made the right decision."

He didn't turn to watch her as she left. He wouldn't have chased her, even if he had been capable of doing so. He stared at his barely-touched food, her final words ringing through his head.

The waiter's discrete cough brought him back to reality. "Will the young lady be returning?"

Tiny looked up, sadly. He reached up, and took the leather folder containing the bill from the man's unresisting hands. With a sigh, he signed the receipt there and handed it back with a sense of closure.

"No. No, she won't be."

**The End.**


End file.
